Building on the success of the Mac IIcx, the IIci offered the 2/3 more power in the same compact case. A new feature was on-board video. The advantage was that users no longer needed to buy a Nubus video card; the drawback was that internal video used RAM from the motherboard, slowing the computer. Adding a video card was a popular way to increase performance up to 30%; another boost came from adding a level 2 (L2) cache. This proved so popular, Apple eventually made a 32KB cache standard.
The IIci was the first Mac with "clean" ROMs, allowing 32-bit operation without MODE 32.
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